


When You Can't Sleep at Night (You Hear My Stolen Lullabies)

by centrumpermanebit



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Fix-It, technically this is compliant with canon because it happens after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centrumpermanebit/pseuds/centrumpermanebit
Summary: "She dreams of a white flower blooming in the moonlight. The taste of burnt coffee. The smell of damp earth after rain. A girl with short brown curls grinning at her. Curling up in bed with the same girl. The smell of eggs burning on the stove.She dreams of strange moments that don’t seem to connect to one another. She likes to think that if she just had one more image of the smiling girl with the brown hair she might be able to conjure her name but instead it dances at the edge of her mind, maddeningly just out of reach."In Northern California, the storyteller begins her story. Weeks earlier, across the pond a manor is sold.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 30
Kudos: 291





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to hell. This has been in my mind since I finished the show yesterday and I entirely blame that one shot of the hand on Jamie's shoulder. I will probably continue this at some point but for now it stands alone.
> 
> Happy reading!

_She sleeps._

She dreams of a white flower blooming in the moonlight. The taste of burnt coffee. The smell of damp earth after rain. A girl with short brown curls grinning at her. Curling up in bed with the same girl. The smell of eggs burning on the stove. 

She dreams of strange moments that don’t seem to connect to one another. She likes to think that if she just had one more image of the smiling girl with the brown hair she might be able to conjure her name but instead it dances at the edge of her mind, maddeningly just out of reach. 

_She wakes._

She always opens her eyes to the murky depths of a lake. She never knows how long she has spent sleeping since she last woke. Oftentimes, she forgets that she has even woken before.

It is always dark when she wakes, cold mist blanketing the lake and dampening any sounds beyond it. 

_She walks._

Walking might be too precise a term to give it, wandering might fit better. When she wakes, she wanders. The lake is part of a grand estate and she wanders it without any real sense of direction. The place is vaguely familiar to her but there are two versions of it layered within her mind. 

She looks at the front door of the house and she sees a horse drawn carriage waiting for a passenger. She blinks and sees another image transposed over the top, replacing the carriage are two cars parked haphazardly in the driveway, doors flung open as though the occupants left in too much haste to close them.

In her weaker moments, she lets herself be drawn into the grand house and up the stairs into a grand bedroom, the furniture draped in sheets. In the moment she reaches the foot of the bed, she feels less like herself than she normally does, like she is being pushed out of herself by something else, a creature filled with heartbreak and rage. 

In her best moments, she finds herself wandering through the greenhouse. Though she can’t remember her own name, she feels closer to being herself than ever when she walks amongst the forgotten yet still living and flourishing plants. She never remembers the dreams she has while sleeping once she wakes but if she did, the greenhouse would smell like her dreams and conjure up the image of a sunny apartment also filled with plants. 

***

She sleeps. She wakes. She walks. Time passes but she has no real awareness of it, nor concept of just how much of it is passing. It’s an endless cycle until the day that it isn’t. 

She wakes and for the first time it isn’t to darkness and mist but to golden sunlight.   
She has spent so long alone, if you didn’t count the rage-filled thing inside her, that she is shocked to find a small crowd of people standing at the edge of the lake. 

There's a large machine beside them, painted a garishly bright yellow, a scoop at the end of a long mechanical arm is covered in dark mud. As she watches, it lowers something to the ground and the people crowd around it. Though the shape is vague, obscured by mud and silt, caught in tangles of underwater plants, it takes her only a moment to realise that what she is looking at is an old fashioned trunk.

***

Time is a funny thing. The way it passes, the way it bends back upon itself to allow for the twists of fate.

Is it a coincidence that in the lead up to Flora's wedding, Henry Wingrave finally does what he has been unable to do for years and places Bly Manor for sale? His rationale is that the money can be given to Flora and Miles, and when better a time for such an inheritance than a time when Flora is marrying and could use the funds to buy a home. Maybe it is simply that with Flora happy, he feels the need to remove that last possible reminder of the tragedies that befell them there from their lives forever.

The one time that Bly Manor is for sale, Violet James and her husband have enough pounds saved away for the deposit. Violet grew up with stories about such a manor her family had owned centuries ago before falling on hardship and selling the estate. Her mother had named her Violet as an homage to her ancestor from the stories, Viola. 

Violet was shocked to find that Bly is not only similar to the manor from the stories but must be that very house. Her husband is unconvinced and so, after too many glasses of wine one night, they agree to settle the argument once and for all by looking for the trunk of Viola’s dresses at the bottom of the lake. 

When Violet opens the trunk, dark hair and dark eyes eerily similar to Viola's own, Viola sees only Isabel coming back for her at last. Hundreds of years and generations too late, Viola is freed from her prison and in doing so, she lets go of the au pair. 

***

The au pair, though she doesn’t remember that is what she once was, is freed from the cycle of sleeping and waking and walking. She no longer feels drawn to the lake or the bedroom upstairs in the house. 

She takes up residence in the greenhouse. There is a sense in the air that she is waiting for something but she can’t remember what it might be. Tired of walking, wandering the grounds at night, she instead sits and stares at the overgrown plants and tries to think of what came before the lake, if anything did. 

Time passes once more but she is able to keep track of it now, watching the light stream in through the glass as the sun rises each morning. Her mouth twists into an unfamiliar shape the first time that she sees the sun rise and she realises that she is smiling, something she intrinsically knows she hasn’t done for a very long time. 

One evening, and how wondrous is it that she now has evenings and mornings and all those times in between, she hears a voice. It is a soft but clear sound and she spins around in the greenhouse searching for the speaker. There is no one but the plants and yet she can still hear the voice as clearly as though someone were speaking quietly just across the room from her. 

There is something familiar about the voice and the ache in her chest tells her that somehow this is what she has been waiting for. 

She begins to walk again but this time it is not aimless, she is not drawn to a place on the estate or back to the lake but towards the voice.

As she walks, she listens to the voice tell a story about ghosts. She passes beyond the estate and into the civilization of first a town and then a city. No one appears to take any notice of her and she begins to wonder if she herself is a ghost like the ones from the story.

She becomes lost in the story and if she were paying closer attention, she might have realised that she was walking farther than should have been at all possible. In the blink between one moment and the next, she appears on the other side of an ocean and continues walking. 

It is only the voice that sounds familiar to her, not the story itself and she finds herself gasping along with the twists and reveals. It is only when the tale travels back in time to Viola Willoughby that she realises with a start that this story must be familiar. The chest full of dresses thrown into the lake, her lake. 

She remembers the machine dragging the chest from the lake, the woman opening it and the feeling of being freed from the rage-filled thing deep inside her. For a moment she wonders if she was once Viola, now set free upon the world, but that doesn’t feel right. 

She is standing in a gravel driveway when the story ends and she stops walking. She realises that she must have once been the au pair in the story and she wonders faintly how long it has been since the events of the story took place. Her heart breaks for the gardener, waiting for her love but she doesn’t dare to hope that she is still out there somewhere to be found. After all, hadn’t Viola been hundreds of years removed from her time? The same might be true of the au pair, everyone she had once known and cared about long dead and gone. 

“Are you alright?” A young man standing in front of her asks. 

She turns, expecting to see someone behind her but there is no one but him. She realises with a start he must be talking to her.

“I- I’m perfectly splendid,” she tells him, stealing the words from the story, voice rough from what is surely years of disuse. 

The young man looks at her strangely before shaking his head. For a moment, she doesn’t see a young man standing there at all but a familiar young boy instead. She blinks and he is a young man again as he turns to climb into a cab that has just pulled up. 

“You really should put on a jumper,” he tells her just before he closes the car door. “You’ll catch your death.”

She begins to laugh as the cab pulls away, a quiet and somewhat manic sound but a laugh all the same.

People begin to stream from the building at the end of the driveway, spilling into cars and gathering in chattering groups to await their own cabs.

Wary of the boy that had spoken to her, she moves again, sluggish now that she no longer feels the inexorable pull of the storyteller’s voice, and makes her way into the copse of trees lining the driveway. 

A strange feeling rises up inside her that she decides must be uncertainty as she moves silently amongst the trees. She had been drawn all the way there by a voice but now she is at a loss. She misses the greenhouse and the simplicity of watching the sun rise through the warped glass. 

She is so caught up in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t notice the insistent tug that announces itself as one final cab pulls up to the driveway. She turns to look in that direction but she is so deep within the trees that by the time she has an unobstructed view, the cab door is closing and leaving with its occupant. 

Though she no longer hears the story or the familiar voice, she feels drawn towards something all the same and she follows along behind the cab. At first, she is careful not to be seen but no one seems to be taking any notice of her as she walks along the sidewalk. Perhaps the boy had been an exception or perhaps the people she passed were just too caught up in their own stories that they didn’t take the time to notice her. 

The cab quickly fades from view but she is able to feel deep within her chest which way it has gone, as though she is a compass always pointing towards it instead of north. She knows without knowing exactly how she knows that the occupant of the cab must be the storyteller. She feels a flutter in her chest in anticipation, hoping beyond hope that the storyteller will be able to see her if she manages to catch up with her. 

She has so many questions. 

She finds herself at a hotel and she slips into a stairwell before the man behind the front desk has the chance to spot her, just in case. The hallway she walks down when she reaches the right floor is lined with closed doors but as luck would have it, she turns a corner and finds herself drawn to the one door that sits ever so slightly ajar. 

Beyond the door is a woman curled up in a chair, head resting on her own shoulder and eyes closed in sleep. Her gentle breathing is the only thing in the room louder than the pounding of the once au pair’s heart. 

This was it, she felt, this was what she had been waiting and then searching for. 

The woman looked so peaceful that it seems cruel to wake her but she seems to have no control of herself as she crosses the room and moves to stand behind her. What if the thing that had drawn her here decides to draw her elsewhere before she has a chance to ask any of her questions?

She reaches out her hand and notices for the first time since she left the lake that a golden ring gleams on her finger as it catches the light. Gently, she places her hand on the woman’s shoulder and at the moment of contact, a name bubbles up from the depths of her mind and passes through her lips.

“Jamie.”


	2. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie wakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm back. No, these characters won't leave me alone. 
> 
> Also was that dress Dani was wearing at the end red? My colorblind self can't really tell but let's just go with it okay.

Jamie had spent so long, it seemed like forever really, waiting for a reflection in water, a shadowy figure in the doorway, a mysterious chill, that when a warm and solid hand rests on her shoulder she just about jumps out of her skin.

She hadn't been sleeping deeply, she hardly ever did these days, and so the light pressure on her shoulder was more than enough to wake her. She expected to turn and see nothing, a phantom touch brought on by wishful thinking. 

She had the shock of her life when she found not empty space behind her chair but Dani. 

"Poppins?" She asked softly, terrified that speaking too loudly would break whatever spell had let this happen. 

Dani looked confused, her beautiful perfect face scrunched in thought, as though she didn't quite remember the nickname.

"Dani?" She tried instead. She was relieved to see some of the confusion clear, smoothing her features.

"That- that was my name once." Dani said slowly, it sounded more like a question than a statement. 

"I reckon it still is," she said cautiously, rising from her chair. 

She stole a few steps closer to her, moving slowly and deliberately in an effort not to startle her. She could hardly believe that this was really happening but it was undeniably Dani standing before her, dressed in the same red velvet dress with thin straps she had been wearing the last time Jamie had seen her. 

Jamie did her best not to think about the last time she had seen Dani and so, naturally, it came to her most often in the form of a nightmare. On the worst nights, she woke from the nightmare and looked over to the other side of the bed searching for Dani, forgetting momentarily that the nightmare was real and Dani was gone.

"I'm sorry I don't know what- I don't know why I-"

"Hey, hey. It's okay. Take a deep breath and we'll figure it out. I promise."

Dani gulped in a deep breath of air and then let it go all in a rush. Her eyes met Jamie's and with a start Jamie noticed they were both a clear blue colour.

"You are Jamie." This was less of a question and it momentarily stuns her that Dani could be sure of her name but not her own.

"That's right." She nodded encouragingly.

Dani fell silent and Jamie gave her the time to work through whatever it was she was trying to figure out in that head of hers. She had questions but they could wait so long as she could keep looking at Dani, _her_ Dani. If this was nothing but a cruel dream, it was one Jamie hoped desperately that she would never wake from. 

*Are you- I mean… you're her, right? The gardener? From the- from the story?"

Jamie blinked. _From the story?_

"You heard that?"

Dani nodded seriously. 

"I was somewhere else. Bly Manor, I guess. I think that’s what it was called in the story. I could hear the story there but I… I followed it here. I didn't realise at first that it was _my_ story. I didn't remember. Even now the details are… blurry."

Jamie was speechless, trying her damnedest not to let tears well up in her eyes at the mere thought of Dani's spirit wandering all the way across the world, following the sound of her voice. Although truth be told, she didn’t look all that much like a spirit just then.

"You didn't answer me," Dani prompted, tearing Jamie from her thoughts.

"I didn't?” 

_Had Dani asked her something?_ It took her a moment to think back over the conversation and realise what she was talking about.

“Oh right, yeah. Sorry. ‘Course I'm the gardener."

Dani’s eyes widened, as though she hadn’t quite expected that answer. She must have suspected to have asked in the first place but Jamie knew from experience that suspecting something and having it confirmed beyond a doubt were two entirely different things. 

"So you must have loved me then, once." Dani’s voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.

"Oh, Pop- Dani. No. Not _once_. Didn't you hear the end of the story? I still love you. I've been waiting for you. I hoped you might show up eventually."

Dani looked down and Jamie thought she was shying away from her until she felt warm fingers brush against hers. She flipped her hand palm upwards and Dani took the clear invitation for what it was and fastened their hands together.

"God, Dani. I missed you." Jamie’s voice cracked but she refused to acknowledge it.

"I missed you, too. I didn't remember it was you I was missing exactly but there was... something I was always waiting for. It's only now that I realise it was you."

"You flirt," she teased, choosing to stay in this perfect moment as long as she could before she had to consider how this was possible and whether she was dreaming or had simply lost her mind.

Dani offered a small grin and it was clear that she remembered that moment in the greenhouse all that time ago well enough.

"Oh, Jamie. _Jamie,_ " Dani murmured, a hint of despair in her voice.

"It's alright, love. Come here."

Dani didn't need any more prompting than that it seemed because no sooner had Jamie made the offer than Dani flung herself into Jamie's arms. Her arms wrapped tightly around Jamie's neck as she dissolved into gasping sobs. 

Dani was so warm and so incredibly, unbelievably there that Jamie had to blink back tears of her own. She wrapped her arms around Dani and breathed in the familiar scent of her.

"Shhh," she hushed gently, "I've got you."

"I was so lost, Jamie," Dani moaned.

“I know, love, I know. But you’re right here now.”

Jamie didn’t know how long they stood there or how much longer they would continue to stand there, just that she was content to hold Dani close after so much time apart. 

Eventually, Dani’s sobs subsided but rather than let go of Jamie or move away, Dani just held on tighter.

At that simple action, Jamie could feel all the shattered pieces of her heart slowly knit themselves back together, even the parts she had thought were gone forever.

Dani had always been worth the effort and Jamie was never letting her go again.


	3. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone thank KonElDanvers for mentioning Owen and appealing to my emotionally curious nature. 
> 
> I'm hoping to get one final chapter done to finish it all off before I go into NaNo hell on Sunday.

Jamie insisted that before they left California, there was one last thing they needed to do. The longer she spent at Jamie's side, the more she remembered but Dani wasn't sure she was herself enough to face anyone else. She worried that she would say the wrong thing or forget something important, but she'd never been able to say no to Jamie and that apparently hadn't changed.

"Dani?" A voice rang out in shock from across the room. It was a familiar voice and Dani recalled hearing her name spoken in that same voice long ago, before she arrived at Bly Manor for the first time.

"Owen," she said, turning from where she stood gazing out the window and doing her best to muster a genuine smile. Jamie had reminded her of his name before she had agreed to this but the memory of their first meeting would have supplied it anyway.

She was glad to see him, though he looked older she could still make out the familiar laugh lines around his mouth. There was still that sadness buried deep in his eyes that had been there ever since they had lost Hannah but it was clear he had found plenty of things to smile and joke about in the years since she had last seen him.

"Turns out, I might have been a little hasty with the ending of that story," Jamie said from her place in the doorway, having trailed Owen inside the hotel room. She leaned against the doorframe in a way that appeared casual but Dani sensed she was secretly poised for action, waiting for the slightest hint that Dani needed her help.

"How is this possible?" Owen asked incredulously.

"I'm not sure," Dani said honestly. "It's all a bit…" She gestured vaguely. 

“Well, it’s good to have you back,” he said, suddenly crossing the room to her as though he had forgotten his manners by hesitating in shock at the sight of her. 

He swept her up into a hug and she returned the embrace after only a moment’s pause. 

When they pulled away, she asked him about the restaurant and watched him talk animatedly about a new menu. She only half-listened, more content to see him happy than to catch every detail of what he said. 

He looked so happy in fact that she almost didn’t say anything at all. If it hadn’t been for that small hint of sadness in his eyes, she probably wouldn’t have dared to bring up the past for fear of dredging up things he might want to forget.

“Owen,” she said once he had wound down a story about a food critic with a deep hatred of puns whom he had successfully converted, “there’s something I think you should know.”

Jamie, who had been happy up until that point to linger on the other side of the room and watch the two of them catch up, took a sudden interest in the conversation, likely able to tell from Dani’s tone that it wasn’t a light-hearted anecdote she was about to relate. 

“All right,” he said slowly.

“It’s about Hannah. When I was… I saw her.”

“What?” He looked at Jamie, as if she could elaborate or offer her own insight. Possibly, he just couldn’t bring himself to look at Dani until he could process her words.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” Jamie said but there wasn’t any resentment in her voice. 

“She’s not- she’s not still trapped there?” He asked, whirling back to Jamie. 

“No, no,” she assured him. “It wasn’t like that. Just that when I was… gone, time didn’t move the same. It wasn’t moving in one direction, forward, like it is now. It was falling all around, like… like confetti. I started to forget after a while but at the beginning I kept stumbling into these memories.”

It was the most she had spoken since she had come back to herself and it was as though now that she had truly found her words again, they flooded from her as though a dam had burst.

“I saw Hannah there. She couldn’t see me, it was like it had already happened and it hadn’t happened yet at the same time but I saw her figure it all out. She visited this one memory over and over. I didn’t understand it at first but then I realised it must have been where she felt safest. If she was going to be stuck in the same place forever, she wanted it to be there, in that memory.”

She could feel Jamie’s and Owen’s eyes boring into her, the room completely silent and she couldn’t remember when it was that her own gaze had shifted away from them to return to the window. 

“It was you, Owen.” she said softly, making herself meet his gaze so he could see the truth of her words. After all, it was a rather unbelievable story, or at least it would have been for anyone who hadn’t been at Bly Manor all those years ago. 

“The memory, her _favourite _memory was meeting you for the first time.”__

__Owen’s eyes misted with tears and it was all she could do to wrap her arms around him once more, offering the little comfort she could._ _

__She wanted to offer something more, some words of comfort or consolation but she had well and truly used up all of her words._ _

__Thankfully, Jamie was there to step in and offer the words Dani couldn’t manage to form herself. She was grateful but also heartbroken, wondering if anyone had been there to offer Jamie the same when Dani was gone._ _

__As bad as she felt for upsetting him, later, when Owen had left in a whirlwind of goodbyes and promises to visit his restaurant soon, Dani felt lighter and she could almost sense Hannah watching over them all and smiling._ _

__***_ _

__They flew to Vermont, home Dani supposed she should call it, later that day. She still didn’t feel completely herself but her tight grip on Jamie’s hand helped her from drifting. It was the anchor she needed to stay present as she looked out the plane window at the endless stretch of blue sky, broken only by soft wisps of cloud._ _

__The apartment looked different but she couldn’t tell if it truly did or if her memories of it had faded too much for her to recall them with perfect clarity._ _

__She could tell that she was being too quiet. She had noticed the way Jamie kept glancing at her and then quickly looking away as though she wanted to ask her something but was afraid to push. It was difficult to remember how to voice her thoughts instead of internalising them, it had been so long since she had spent time with anyone. In the lake she had had only the quiet voice deep within her that occasionally reared it’s rage-filled head for company._ _

__Her thoughts were so loud, she struggled not to be drawn down into them and stay herself enough to hold conversation. She kept noticing things and thinking, leaving no room in her mind to form words. She noticed the thin layer of dust covering most surfaces in the kitchen, the messy stack of papers on the counter, the dead plant soaking in a shallow pool of water in the sink in what looked like a last-ditch attempt to save it._ _

__There were two jackets hanging by the front door and she found herself staring at them. They stood at attention, looking like they were waiting for someone to pick them up on their way out the door on a chilly day. There was nothing inherently strange about jackets waiting by a door so it takes her longer than she would have expected to figure out what it is that bothers her so much about the picture. Finally, she studies the jacket on the right, a puffy thing lined with dark blue fleece and she realises that not only does she recognise it but it belongs to her._ _

__She was so caught up in her thoughts, at the dull ache the sight of her jacket sent ricocheting through her chest that she completely missed what it was Jamie said to her._ _

__“Sorry, what?” she asked, all too glad to drag her gaze away from the jackets and focus on Jamie._ _

__“I just asked if you wanted something to eat is all. There’s nothing here really but we could order in.”_ _

__Dani took a moment to think about it. Was she hungry? The hollow feeling in her stomach wasn’t anything new but now that she really thought about it she supposed that she was._ _

__“Food would be good,” she said decisively. “I think I need to shower first, though. Can I…?”_ _

__“Of course, yeah. I’ll sort the food while you do that.”_ _

__Dani wandered down the hallway, wondering idly if there was a way to burn the dress she was wearing without setting off the fire alarm or worse, burning down the whole apartment. She paused at the bathroom door, turning back to see that Jamie’s green eyes had followed her._ _

__“It’s good to be home,” she said, offering her a small smile._ _

__Something like surprise, perhaps even disbelief, flitted across Jamie’s features before she settled on an answering grin._ _

__“Yeah. Yeah it is.”_ _

__***_ _

__If Jamie noticed that Dani returned to the living room wearing clothes that are definitely Jamie’s and not her own, she chose not to comment on it._ _

__They eat on the couch, seated a seemingly insurmountable distance apart. Dani was at once disappointed and relieved at the space. As wonderful as it had felt to finally have a warm shower and change out of that dress, there had been a brief moment with the water pouring over her when she had imagined herself drowning in the lake all over again. Gasping for air, she had shut off the water and laid her forehead against the cold tile of the wall until Jamie had called out to her that the food had arrived._ _

__Despite the warmth of the shower, she had been left with a bone-deep chill and had layered on several items of Jamie’s clothing when she dressed. She had considered her own clothes but the idea of reliving any more memories that night just because she chose a particular shirt had filled her with a sense of dread. It had seemed safer to wear Jamie’s and beg forgiveness if she had a problem with it._ _

__The distance between them from the living room disappeared once they climbed into bed together. She felt like she was simply returning to her natural state of orbiting Jamie when they curled up together, hardly an inch of space between them. She wasn’t sure if it was the darkness or Jamie’s clear exhaustion that allowed them to fit back together with ease but she wasn’t about to question it._ _

__After years of sleeping and waking, only to wander Bly Manor at night, Dani found it difficult to sleep. Even curled up in bed next to Jamie, she couldn’t quite make herself close her eyes and let herself rest. She was terrified that she would open her eyes again to find herself once again at the bottom of the lake, especially after what had happened in the shower._ _

__Jamie had drifted off to sleep almost as soon as they had clambered into bed together, head resting on Dani’s shoulder._ _

__Dani inhaled a sharp breath of surprise when she felt a warm hand on her thigh. She glanced down and realised that Jamie had reached out for her in her sleep. There was a familiarity to the touch, like something she had felt countless times before, but her lack of any one memory in particular of it made it simultaneously feel like the first time Jamie had touched her that way._ _

__It should have scared her, she thought, this closeness after her time being lost._ _

__She could lose this again._ _

__She could lose herself again._ _

__She could at any moment wake up at the bottom of that cursed lake, all of this just a hopeful dream. For all she knew, the real lady of the lake had tucked Dani away for her own nefarious purpose._ _

__She decided that if this was a dream or something she could somehow lose again, she might as well make the most of it and, instead of shying away, she covered Jamie’s hand with her own, tangling their fingers together._ _

__She let herself relax, eyes drifting closed._ _

___She sleeps._ _ _


	4. Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the final installment. I have plans to write more in this fandom but I am about to try and write a novel in a month so it might take me a little while.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has supported this story, I hope you enjoy this conclusion.

Jamie wasn't sure at first what to do about Dani's return. Practically, she knew that she couldn’t leave _Leafling_ closed much longer but she hated the idea of leaving Dani alone in the flat all day. 

She was in the kitchen making tea, having decided that she needed a hit of caffeine before she could consider the problem in any great detail, when Dani wandered in. She had bare feet, having kicked off her socks in the night like she always did and the dark circles under her eyes told the story of a restless night. 

When she had climbed out of bed a few minutes before, she had thought Dani was still fast asleep but now she wondered if the other woman had slept at all. 

“Tea?” she asked, pulling another mug from the cupboard when she nodded. 

They drank their tea in companionable silence, though Dani seemed a little lost in thought as she gazed into her mug.

Dani quietly asked if she could come down to the shop, promising quite unnecessarily that she would stay out of the way and let Jamie work, solving Jamie’s earlier internal dilemma.

The shop was a bit of a mess. 

It would have to be given that Jamie had spent years running the place largely on her own. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to open at first, when she had returned from Bly Manor without Dan,i but as time passed and the prospect of losing the business began to loom on the horizon, she had returned to work. As much as it had hurt to be in the shop on her own, the prospect of losing the little shop her and Dani had built so happily together had been unbearable.

Dani wandered through the shop, trailing her fingers carefully over the flowers as though she feared they might turn to dust at her touch. 

Jamie settled into work, poring over the records, but her gaze was drawn again and again to Dani. It was at once strange and familiar to have her there with her as she worked. 

As the day wore on, they settled into something like a routine of working together but Dani still drifted occasionally. Her gaze would wander away from what she was doing and Jamie would have to call her name several times before she could get her attention. 

Dani was back but it seemed like she wasn’t wholly present, at least not all of the time.

***

In the first weeks following Dani’s return, Jamie would forget herself from time to time. The years-long habit of filling the sink and bathtub before opening the front door an inch each night would overtake her. 

The first time, Dani found Jamie on the bathroom floor staring at her reflection on the water’s surface. She sat beside her and gazed into the water herself. Tremors racked her body and Jamie could only watch numbly as Dani seemed to wrestle with something deep within her thoughts.

Eventually, Dani had managed to shake off whatever it was that had gripped her. Jamie expected her to flee the room, needing space after the unpleasant reminder of what had happened to her. 

She was surprised when Dani calmly let out the water, first in the bathtub and then in the sink. As she let out the water from the sink, she must have caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror above it and Jamie noticed the way she flinched in response.

She hadn’t faltered, though, and had immediately turned away to offer her hands out to Jamie. She helped her up from the floor, seeming to realise that Jamie was in a daze and not able to get up herself.

She led Jamie away from the bathroom and down the hall to their bedroom. The lamp on the bedside table glowed dimly, the covers of the bed thrown back on one side. Dani must have already been in bed when she had noticed Jamie missing and gone looking for her.

They curled up together, Dani holding Jamie close and running her fingers gently through Jamie’s curls in a surprisingly soothing gesture. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that in silence but eventually she tried to apologise, both for her own state and for upsetting Dani in the process.

Dani had simply shushed her and tightened her grip on Jamie, murmuring that she should try to sleep.

Each time it happened, Dani was there to let out the water, close their front door firmly and guide Jamie to bed. She would flinch whenever she caught sight of her own reflection but she never again lost herself by staring deeply into the water. Those awful tremors remained at bay.

Eventually, the habit slipped from Jamie’s mind and she never did it again. 

***

Sometimes, Jamie woke in the night and reached over to find Dani gone. Her heart would leap into her throat as panic gripped her. She would relive that morning, waking up to that goddamned note and Dani taken by the demon that had lain dormant inside her for years.

More often than not, when the panic subsided and Jamie went in search of her wife, she found her sitting in the living room and staring at the plants as though they held the answer to a question she desperately wanted an answer to.

The first time, not even calling her name had had any effect on drawing Dani’s attention away from the plants. Jamie had sat with her until the sun rose and the dawn light broke her out of whatever trance she had been trapped in. 

“Oh,” she had said, blinking and looking surprised to find Jamie sitting beside her. 

“What do you reckon, want to go back to bed? It’s way too early for me.”

Dani had caught Jamie’s hand in her own before nodding.

“How long was I...?” She asked once they were settled in the warmth and safety of their bed.

“Not entirely sure, a few hours at least.”

Something like despair and confusion crossed her features and Jamie wished for a moment that she was the sort of person who could have been a little less honest.

“It’s all right,” she assured Dani. “We’ll figure it out. It might just take some getting used to.”

“What if it doesn’t? What if I’m like this forever? Not all the way here…”

“Then we’ll deal with that too, okay? Promise.”

Dani had nodded wearily, dropping off to sleep shortly after.

Jamie had laid awake long after, reeling from the way she had panicked when she had woken to an empty bed.

It continued to happen but it became easier to draw Dani back to herself each time. The initial wave of panic Jamie felt when she woke alone remained but it took her less and less time each night it happened to realise Dani wasn’t truly gone.

The night wanderings, or sleepwalking, became less frequent as the weeks and then months passed but it would be almost a year before they ceased completely.

***

The day that Jamie knew for certain, beyond a doubt that everything was going to be fine and her Dani was back for good, started just like any other day since Dani had come back. 

Soft kisses in bed as the early morning sun streamed through the windows to bathe the bedroom in golden light, warm mugs of tea in the kitchen.

After dealing with a delivery, Jamie returned inside the shop to find Dani holding a mug of something. 

“I made you coffee,” she said, offering the mug out and smiling sweetly. 

Jamie thought it was pretty impressive that she managed to stop herself from grimacing in response to that sentence. If Dani had offered to make coffee or tea, she might have been able to find a polite way to refuse or make it herself but there was no way to do that when the mug was being held out to her,

“All right, thank you.”

She took the offered drink. It was a murky brown colour which didn’t inspire much confidence but she steeled herself and took a dutiful sip anyway. 

The acrid taste filled her mouth and she wanted nothing more than to spit it out but Dani watched her so closely that she made herself swallow it. It burned her throat as it went down and she was unable to hold herself back from coughing and then grimacing. 

“I can’t believe you actually drank that,” Dani said, bursting into giggles at the sight of what must have been a completely dumbfounded expression on Jamie’s face. 

_It had been a joke, almost a prank really,_ Jamie realised.

She found herself laughing in response to Dani’s ridiculous giggling and eventually Dani kissed her cheek by way of apology. 

It was a small moment in the grand scheme of things but it was such a pure thing, completely free from any kind of darkness that it made Jamie hopeful that soon days like that would begin to outnumber the bad days.

***

It was almost a year later that they found the time to visit Owen. He had come to visit them at Christmas but that had been such a whirlwind that there hadn’t been much opportunity to sit down together and really talk. 

When they finally stepped through the door of _A Batter Place_ , Dani’s hand holding Jamie’s tightly, Owen had been overjoyed to see them. They had come for lunch, a slightly less busy time of day for him, so that he had the chance to hand over to his staff and sit down with them. 

Dani spent most of the time chatting animatedly, laughing about the odd demands some recent customers at the shop had made. Owen responded with jokes and anecdotes of his own but Jamie didn’t miss the pointed questioning glances he sent her way when Dani wasn’t looking.

She wasn’t surprised that when Dani excused herself to answer a call, Owen asked her what was going on. 

She was tempted to feign ignorance but she has never really been one for lying, other than to herself occasionally. 

It was hard to refute that something was going on, especially when she thought about the last time the three of them had been in that very restaurant together. They had been on borrowed time then, both of them waiting for that goddamned beast in the jungle to pop up and shred everything to pieces with its claws. 

It might have made sense for that darkness to have lifted now that the looming threat was gone but Owen had rightfully realised that there still should have been something lingering, Dani and Jamie both touched by what had happened. 

The years Dani had spent wandering. 

The years Jamie had spent alone. 

“Do you remember what we talked about the last time we were here?” She asked, her eyes following Dani’s figure outside the front windows as she spoke into her phone. She didn’t want to look at Owen as he figured it out.

“Flora and Miles,” he said slowly, “No, you don’t mean- I mean how is it possible that she could forget?”

Owen had always been smarter than people gave him credit for and she had known he would put it together, that discussion and Dani’s behaviour.

“I don’t know that she’s forgotten exactly. She remembers everything that happened between us back then. And she talks about Hannah and the kids, too. But it’s like anything touched by the lady of the lake is hazy. If I mention something that happened when she was gone, her eyes just sort of glaze over like she’s trying to recall a dream that’s quickly fading away.”

“She doesn’t remember the years she spent in the lake?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure she ever did, just the impressions of things that have since faded. We had this regular customer come in about a month ago, she comes in once a year on her wife’s birthday. Dani ends up chatting with her and I hear her ask where Dani has been. I’m all set to interrupt and for Dani to panic but instead she just smiles and tells her that she was in a coma. The sureness with which she said it honestly made me wonder if she didn’t half believe the story herself.”

They were quiet as Owen absorbed that information. 

“Does it bother you?” He asked eventually. “That you’re the one left remembering it all?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Look how happy she is,” she added at his look of disbelief. 

“I’ve only ever wanted her to be happy, really. I don’t mind being the one who remembers it if it means she can sleep through the night and look into a mirror without flinching.”

Owen stared at her for a long moment, his gaze so intense that she wanted to look away but she felt like doing so would betray more than she wanted to of herself. 

“She is so lucky to have you, Jamie.”

To her mortification, she felt herself start to tear up at the kindness of his words and the warmth in his gaze so it was just as well that Dani chose that moment to return. 

“What are we talking about?” Dani asked, sliding back into her chair and immediately leaning into Jamie’s side. She pressed a kiss to Jamie’s cheek and then turned to Owen, rightly figuring out that he was more likely to answer her question. 

“Luck,” Owen said. 

Owen and Jamie exchanged a bittersweet smile and then Owen steered the conversation in another direction with a typically ridiculous pun of his. 

They never spoke of it again.


End file.
